Chapter 5: What Kayla Knew
I didn't answer right away.
The name had lived in my head for weeks as a fact, a piece of evidence, a line in a hotel receipt.
Hearing it spoken out loud in a real voice — quiet, slightly unsteady — made it something else.
"How did you get this number?" I asked.
"Ethan's phone.
He left it on the counter when he went to get coffee this morning.
I know how that sounds." A pause.
"I know exactly how that sounds.
I'm not — I'm not calling to make excuses.
I'm calling because there are things you don't know.
Things I think you need to know before this goes any further."
Claire was watching me from across the room.
I held up one finger.
"Where are you?" I asked.
"A coffee shop on Meridian.
About ten minutes from your sister's neighborhood.
I looked up the address.
I'm sorry.
I know that's strange.
I just — I didn't want to do this over the phone."
I looked at Claire.
She mouthed: Do you want me to come?
I nodded.
"Give me thirty minutes," I told Kayla.
She was already there when we arrived.
A woman in her late twenties, dark hair pulled back, both hands wrapped around a coffee cup she wasn't drinking from.
She looked up when I walked in and her face did something complicated — relief and guilt arriving at the same time.
I sat down across from her.
Claire took the chair beside me and said nothing.
"Thank you for coming," Kayla said.
"Tell me what you need to tell me."
She set the cup down.
"Ethan and I — it ended in April.
I ended it.
Because I found out he had been lying to me the same way he was lying to you."
I waited.
"He told me you were separated.
That you'd been living separately for almost a year.
That the pregnancy was — that it happened before things fell apart between you, and that you'd agreed to co-parent but the marriage was already over." She looked at the table.
"I believed him.
For four months, I believed him.
And then in April I ran into a woman at the gym who knew both of you.
She mentioned that you were still together, still living together, that you were almost due." Her jaw tightened.
"I confronted him that same night.
He admitted it.
I ended it immediately."
"And then you went to Scottsdale with him."
Her head came up.
"What?"
"He just came back from Scottsdale.
With his parents.
He left on my due date."
"I wasn't in Scottsdale.
I haven't seen him since April." She pulled out her phone and set it on the table between us.
"I can show you.
Every message since April.
There's nothing.
I blocked him for six weeks and he only recently started texting again.
I haven't responded."
I looked at the phone.
She unlocked it and turned it toward me without hesitation.
The messages were there.
Ethan's name at the top.
A long gap from April onward.
Then three messages in the past two weeks, all from him, all unanswered.
The most recent one was from four days ago.
It read: *We need to talk.
Something's happened.
Call me.*
The timestamp was the day before he left for Scottsdale.
"He texted you the day before he left," I said.
"I know.
I saw it.
I didn't respond."
I sat back.
Something was shifting in my understanding of the shape of this.
Ethan hadn't gone to Scottsdale to meet Kayla.
Kayla had ended it months ago and wanted nothing to do with him.
Which meant the private smile that morning, the phone turned facedown, the message he'd been reading —
"Do you know a woman named Kayla Marsh?" I asked.
She blinked.
"That's me."
"I know.
I meant — is there anyone else in his life you know of?
Anyone he might have moved on to after you?"
Kayla was quiet for a moment.
Then she reached into her bag and set a folded piece of paper on the table.
"That's why I called you," she said.
"Because when I ended things in April, he didn't argue.
He didn't fight for me.
He barely seemed upset." She tapped the paper.
"Two weeks later, I saw this."
I unfolded it.
It was a printed screenshot.
An Instagram post.
A woman I didn't recognize, standing beside Ethan at what looked like a rooftop bar.
His arm around her shoulders.
Both of them smiling.
The post was dated three weeks after Kayla ended things.
Three weeks after April.
Which meant while I was seven months pregnant and assembling the nursery alone, Ethan had already moved on to someone new.
The caption read: *Finally.* With a single heart emoji.
Her username was visible at the top of the screenshot.
I didn't recognize the name.
But Claire did.
Her hand came down on my arm.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
"Madison," she said quietly.
"That's Ethan's coworker.
I've met her.
May you like
At the company Christmas party two years ago." She paused.
"She was there with her husband."
